There has been an air of excitement in the Ummah since the presidential elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The older generation of Imam Khomeini’s friends and followers, this writer included, are uplifted by the fact that “one of us” – a Revolutionary – has become the president of an Islamic state that was, during the incumbency of the last two presidents, losing its Islamic character while promoting its nationalist and sectarian inclinations.
There has been an air of excitement in the Ummah since the presidential elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The older generation of Imam Khomeini’s friends and followers, this writer included, are uplifted by the fact that “one of us” – a Revolutionary – has become the president of an Islamic state that was, during the incumbency of the last two presidents, losing its Islamic character while promoting its nationalist and sectarian inclinations.
Being an Islamic state is not easy. We know this from the history of the first Islamic state founded by our revered Prophet (saw). That state – with its Islamic groundwork and Qur’anic political orientation – survived for only a relatively short time, the the epoch of al-khulafa’ al-rashideen. After that it began to founder; the model of social altruism and a leadership in the service of the people – exemplified by the rule of the khulafa’ – gave way to recusant nationalists and tribal irredentists led by the Umayyad dynasty and the rest of the monarchies that followed, from Baghdad to Istanbul and from Cairo to Tehran.
As long as the government of the United States of America is zionist, and as long as the government in Iran is Islamic, there can be no common ground between the two. It is only when the government in Washington begins to de-zionize itself (which is a pipedream) or when the government in Tehran begins to secularize itself (which is the dream of secular Iranian nationalists and Shi‘i traditionalists who cannot stand the word wilayat-e faqih) that we will have diplomatic pouches exchanged between Tehran and Washington.
The global Islamic movement, spreading all over the world, and the Islamic State in Iran, the leading edge of the movement, have one major problem in common: the sectarianism of the Muslims within them. And yet all these Muslims are blind to the sectarianism of Muslims in their own communities, those they regard as” our type of Muslims. Thus, “Sunni” Muslims are often oblivious to individuals and leaders in their own communities who cannot tolerate “Shi‘i” Muslims; and equally, “Shi‘i” Muslims are unconscious of individuals and leaders whose attitude to non-Shi‘is is deeply sectarian.
"The tiger is a dangerous animal." This sentence is simple, self-explanatory and straightforward. Any adult - or even a child beyond a very simple stage of development - understands what this statement means and knows to steer well clear of tigers. However, insert different nouns in the same very simple sentence - "the government of the United States is a shaytani buzurg (a giant Satan)", for example - and somehow the clarity of meaning disappears, at least for many leaders in the Islamic movement and politicians and officials in the Islamic State of Iran.
The politically organized people of Iran erupted against centuries of misrepresentation and misrule twenty-six years ago. Under the fearless and forward-moving leadership of Imam Khomeini (ra) and the politically conscious ulama with him, Iran was declared an Islamic Republic. It also proclaimed itself to the bi-polar Cold War world as belonging to neither America nor the US; the proud boast of the time was: “NeitherEast nor West; Islam is the best.” It also presented itself as a fresh alternative to the Sunni-Shi’a dichotomy, determined not to be distracted or consumed by sectarianism: “Neither Shi’i, nor Sunni; rather an Islamic Revolution.”
In this column it is sometimes necessary to raise issues that others are reluctant to discuss, and many reluctant to hear. It is our conviction that knowledge is superior to ignorance and always preferable to it, and that an informed public is better able to decide its future than one kept in ignorance.
An Islamic state is an ideological state; it is not a nationalist state and it is not a sectarian state. Achieving this, however, is easier said than done. An Islamic state rooted in an ideological Qur’an and a strategic Sunnah proved difficult to sustain for the early generations of Muslims after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace. It is now proving just as hard to reconstruct after the death of Imam Khomeini (r).
One interesting feature of the current world dichotomy – the division between the United States and its “war on terrorism” and the Islamic movement, with Islamic Iran at its heart – is the emerging realization in the central countries of the two sides that they can no longer rely on their principal constituents...
That the Islamic movement has venomous and ruthless enemies appears to be among the most difficult lessons for Muslims to learn. In all the Islamic movement literature that we are familiar with, from that of the docile tablighis to that of the revolutionary jihadis, we have never seen a book (or even a booklet) called “Know Your Enemy”...
The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 was a watershed in contemporary history. Those of us who are old enough to remember the time before the Revolution remember a period in which Muslims everywhere were subject to repression whenever they tried to establish Islam in its entirety...
One of the virtues of the Islamic Revolution of a quarter of a century ago, and of its forthright and plain-spoken leadership, was its ability to go beyond generalizations and vague language. The Muslims of the world have been in a linguistic limbo for ages. Such words as “kafir,” “mushrik,” “munafiq,” “mustakbireen,” “mustad’afeen,” etc...
Revolutions have many enemies. The enemies of an Islamic Revolution are one of two types: those that confront it from the outside and those that creep up on it from within...
1They must be etched into the memory of every activist of the Islamic movement – the triumph of Imam Khomeini, the culminating success of the Islamic Revolution and the defeat of the Shah, together with the failure of secularism and of the Israeli agents entrenched in the Pahlavi dynasty and establishment...
During the heyday of the Islamic Revolution, under the capable and visionary leadership of Imam Khomeini, Muslims were faced with two accusations in response to the challenge posed by the Islamic leadership, the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic state to the powers that be...
In order to properly understand the achievement of the late Imam Khomeini (r.a.) and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, we need to understand them as being simultaneously located within four concentric circles: the oppressed peoples, the Islamic peoples, the Shi’i peoples, and the Iranian peoples...
One of the first messages to have been proclaimed by the Islamic Revolution and the line of the Imam was that the Islamic Revolution in Iran is neither of eastern nor of western affiliation...
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